Morning Report 11/17/05Lies My Fodder Told Me

While the noose cycle snaps up dismaying revelations by and about former hero Bob Woodward, Cheney found the right crowd yesterday. So the vise president decided to tell some astounding new lies about the Iraq debacle.

"What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.

The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out. American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures — conducting raids, training Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers — and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie."

People aren't "suggesting" any such thing. It's past the point of "suggesting" and on to "telling."

I recently pointed out the obvious — that lies beget lies — so it's no surprise that the Bush regime is stepping on its own Dick. How brazen of Dick himself to do it.

To top it all off, he's one to talk about concern for soldiers, 2,000 of whom have been killed so far in Iraq. During the Vietnam War, Cheney had "other priorities," as my colleague Tom Robbins has pointed out. (Full disclosure: I was a draft-dodger back then and, unlike Cheney, freely admitted it.)

But these days, Cheney wears faux military gear and is brave enough to send others to die for him in a war of his own making. As he told last night's adoring crowd:

The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone — but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. (Applause.)

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

As for those words from Cheney merely being an honest mistake, forget it.

Thanks to Michael Smith and other British reporters who uncovered the Downing Street Memo and other documents, we know that the Bush regime, led by its CEO, decided to go to war and then "fixed" the intelligence to suit them.

Let's get the history straight before any rewriting is done by these goniffs.